South Africa Day 1 - Airports, African roads and Addo

Day 1 of my trip to South Africa begins when our plane lands in Johannesburg in the early hours of Sunday morning. Through some bizarre organisational bad luck, my partner Craig and I end up having to queue for 2 hours with hundreds of other people to get through passport control before we can get to our connecting flight to Port Elizabeth. Luckily we make it just in time, and after a brief snooze and the delights of an aeroplane breakfast, we land in Port Elizabeth airport and head outside to find our hire car. We'd booked a VW Polo Sedan but end up with a Ford Ikon Sedan, which feels a little clunky but will do the job. Setting up the Sat Nav, we head towards Addo Elephant National park, which will be our home for the next 2 nights. Not long into the journey we get a bit lost and end up taking the "scenic" route. I soon learn that "scenic" is synonymous with "potholed". We traverse the uneven surface carefully and manage to navigate back to the main road as we head further away from the suburbs and into the beautiful rolling hills in the Addo area.

We arrive safely at the Avoca guest houses, where we are greeted and given a wealth of information about our chalet, breakfast arrangements and nearby places to eat. Craig's sister Erica and her husband Steve arrived the previous day, but they're out on a safari trip on the Scotia reserve and won't be back until later. Our chalet is a wonderful thatched building set just up from a small river.

There are a family of rock rabbits, or dassies, living around the braai area outside our bedroom window. When we arrive they are sunning themselves on the tree branches and playing around the bushes.

After a brief walk around the grounds, discovering the prickly pear plant and meeting some feral but friendly cats, we head out for dinner to the recommended local restaurant Africanos.

I enjoy some delicious game carpaccio to start, followed by kudu schnitzel which is unfortunately a little blander than I was expecting. We have a tasty bottle of Beyerskloof Pinotage with the meal and I have my first experience of a Don Pedro, a wonderful Amarula ice cream drink to finish. Heading back to the chalet, we marvel at how clearly we can see the milky way and stars in the sky without city light pollution, have a quick catch up with Craig's sister and her husband to hear about their trip to the Scotia reserve, then head to bed for my first night under African sky.

L'Autre Pied

After dining at Pied A Terre a few years ago and experiencing some of the most divine tasting food ever to grace my pallet, I've been wanting to visit their sister restaurant, L'Autre Pied, for some time. With Valentine's Day lurking and a half price offer on Groupon for the tasting menu, it seemed like as good a time as any to sample the winter menu.

It's a chilly Thursday evening, and I've met my other half at a nearby pub for a swift pre-dinner drink, as we had to book in advance and the earliest sitting was 9pm. Luckily I usually eat late, so it's not an issue, but I'm ready for some food. We're seated next to an illuminated pillar and shown the menu, and we decide to opt for the matched wines whilst our waiter fills our water glasses. I'll apologise now for the terrible picture quality - the aforementioned illuminated pillar cast an eerie green glow over everything, which wasn't an issue at the time, but has somewhat hampered any hope of decent photography.

The first course is a celeriac mousse with lemon and puffed wild rice. The mousse is deliciously light and creamy, and the crispness of the rice topping is unusual but works well as a contrast in texture. The lemon flavour is quite pronounced, and overshadows the flavour of the celeriac slightly. It's a very tasty dish to start the meal though, and leaves me eager for the next course.

I'm so eager to dive into the next course that I forget to take a green-tinged picture, so you'll have to imagine the appearance of this salad of heirloom carrots, radicchio, creme fraiche and black quinoa. Unfortunately, my excitement for the second course is a little short lived, as this course just doesn't do it for me. Raddiccio is very bitter, and the other flavours in the dish just don't seem to work with the overpowering taste of the leafy vegetable. It tastes slightly pickled too, however the dressing seems to highlight the bitter flavour, rather than complementing or counteracting it. The creme fraiche provides a light mellowing element to the vegetables, but there isn't enough of it to restore any balance to the plate. I can't really tell where the black quinoa is, so it doesn't seem to add anything to the dish either with flavour or texture. This course isn't inedible by any means (I finish it all!), but it also isn't a dish I would choose again. I think perhaps the potential exists to make these ingredients work together, but the way it is executed really isn't to my taste. Our paired wines begin with this course, and the first is a Portuguese vinho verde - the 2015 Alvarinho-Trajadura Minho Leira Seca, which is quite dry with a distinct mineral element. It's hard to say how well it matches the dish as the food isn't working for me, however it is at least a fresh and crisp way to begin the wine matching experience.

Our next wine is a 2012 Gavi Di Gavi, which is immediately fruitier and softer than the previous white. It has a sweet peach undertone which works well with the more characteristically acidic notes of the Italian Cortese grape variety. This wine also accompanies our next dish perfectly. The fish course is a cod fillet, with Fowey mussels, charred leek, lemon and rye. The cod is cooked to perfection, it's creamy and falls apart with the lightest touch of a fork. The mussels add a more pronounced fish essence to the broth, and complement the flavours of the cod and leek beautifully. The lemon in the sauce is not overpowering, and the textures work well together to create and exciting and delicious plate of food.

Following the fish is a main of roast Gressingham duck, with peppered swede, baby turnips, apple and mustard leaf. I read on a TripAdvisor review that the current Head Chef Graham Long has designed the menu with a nod to comfort food, and this dish definitely fits that remit to a tee. The hearty winter vegetables marry perfectly with the richness of the roast duck, and the subtle sharpness of the apple. There are a lot of strong flavours going on, but they work together to create a bold and flavoursome dish. The matched wine, a 2014 Valdeorras Mencia - Bodega Maria Teresa Nunez, is surprisingly light and floral to go with the big flavours of the food, but it works well, with subtle tannins and dark fruit flavours offsetting the rich and complex elements of the dish. It's not my favourite wine ever, and I probably would have chosen something a little spicier and more robust with this plate of food, but I'm no wine expert and it's good to try new things. We're offered bread throughout the savoury courses, which I continue to accept with pleasure. There's a brioche style mini bun, a rustic mini baguette and a fruit filled sliced loaf, all of which are fresh and tasty, and a welcome tool for soaking up the sauces of the fish and meat courses. 

Next up is the cheese platter - always one of my favourites, and due to our inability to make decisions, we're lucky enough to be given a port and a red wine to go with this course. I can't remember the exact cheeses we were given, but there are 2 from France and 2 from Switzerland. There is a hard cheese that may or may be a Comte, a very ripe soft cheese, a soft and creamy blue and a sharp medium hard cheese with a very bitter rind. The blue is my favourite, the hard and sharp cheeses are delicious, and the soft cheese is enjoyable in small quantities, but just on the verge of being a little too powerful in flavour for my palette. We agreed that the port goes better with the Swiss cheeses, and the red is better matched to the French selection. The port isa little less sweet than I'm used to, and whilst pleasant, it is eclipsed for me by the red, a 2014 mixed grape wine from the Clos De Paulilles estate in the Collioure region of Southern France. I'm not usually a fan of Southern French reds, as I tend to find the tannins far too heavy in contrast to the depth of flavour. This wine is spectacular though, with a balanced roundness and beautifully subtle tannins which only serves to add to the aromatic, full bodied flavours. It is definitely one of the highlights of the meal for me.

A light pre-dessert of a chocolate mousse allows us to finish our port / wine at a leisurely pace, and I'm even happier to discover that the delectable Collioure also goes nicely with the sweet and bitter chocolate / caramel elements of this light treat in between courses.

The final course is a rhubarb cheesecake with mandarin sorbet. The colour on the jelly rhubarb topping is particularly vibrant, which looks quite odd in my green hued pictures. Brightness aside, the dessert is wonderfully light and fresh in flavour, with the right amount of sweetness to counter the sourness of the rhubarb. The citrus element of the mandarin sorbet adds a gentle layer of contrast to create an interesting and very pleasant end to the meal. Our wine with this course is a 2012 Chateau Villefranche Sauternes. I'm generally a fan of a white Bordeaux and this golden French offering is no exception. The typical sweetness of this region's wine pairs well with the creamy cheesecake, with the slight acidity matching well with the tarter fruit flavours.

We finish the meal with a coffee and some little truffles, a nice addition to the end of the evening. The service was good, we weren't rushed but didn't feel forgotten either. Our greeting upon arrival was very friendly and welcoming, and at no point were we made to feel any less valued as customers for using a Groupon voucher. It's certainly a compact restaurant, we were seated very close to a little service area and there was rarely a moment when there wasn't a small huddle of floor staff dishing up or clearing plates from the tables around us. It didn't bother me particularly, but I can imagine this being a little off-putting for someone who wasn't as easily able to switch off from their surroundings. There are other tables in the restaurant that look a little more sheltered, as it were, so I'm sure that one of these could be requested for those who are more space aware. The sommelier was friendly and helpful, and seemed genuinely interested to discover whether we preferred the red or the port with the cheese course. Overall, I was really pleased with the evening. It doesn't feel as exclusive as the sister restaurant Pied A Terre, and that's because it's not. But that's ok, in my opinion L'Autre Pied is the perfect little sister - it's more relaxed than its fine dining counterpart, but the food is still well thought out and exceptionally prepared. If you want the culinary experience but can't quite stretch to the budget of the 2 Michelin starred Pied, I would definitely recommend L'Autre Pied for an altogether very pleasant experience. 

What I Ate Wednesday

I keep meaning to start a regular What I Ate Wednesday #WIAW post, as it's something I've seen pop up on various blogs and social media pages I follow, and I think it's a great idea to keep track of an average day's food, and share with other foodies out there.

One of my goals for this year is to eat more healthily, and keep track of my food intake. I really, really love food, so I'm never going to be one of those people who live on a very restrictive diet, cutting out anything that's not 100% nutritious! I'm working on a post for the near future about nutrition in general, and how confusing it can be to try and eat well these days given the amount of conflicting opinions available to us in this technological age. But for now I shall just go through what I ate on Wednesday, and why!

Breakfast

Bowl of oats, with dried fruit, flaked almonds and full fat milk. Coffee.

Oats fill me up, and give me energy to concentrate on work up until lunch, when I'll often go for a jog. Adding some sweetness with dried fruit, good fats from the almonds and the creamy deliciousness of whole milk gives me a fairly balanced breakfast that I really enjoy eating. I usually have a coffee in the morning too with milk and a teaspoon of honey. In an ideal world I would have less sugar (from the fruit, honey and lactose in the milk) and more protein and fresh vegetables, As I mentioned earlier, however, I don't live in an ideal world and I'm well aware my diet has its flaws!

Lunch

Open sandwich on wholemeal bread with cream cheese, smoked salmon, mixed leaves and avocado. 

Again, I know there are better choices for lunch, but I enjoy these flavours, and I've got a combination of some complex carbs, good fats and nutrients from the avocado and salad. 

Dinner

Spinach and cheese omelette on toast.

I train on Wednesdays and I don't have time to eat beforehand, so I try and make something quick and tasty when I get in. I'm a huge fan of omlettes, I added cheese for flavour and spinach to be healthy! Carb-haters will sneer at the toast, but it's wholemeal, and a small loaf, and I don't have a wheat intolerance so when I have bread at home (which isn't that often) I will enjoy some toast!

Snacks

Chocolate mousse, a satsuma, a slice of cake, Tango.

Snacks are my downfall and this is a fair example of my bad snacking. The cake was left over from new year, as was the Fanta. I really enjoy satsumas, even more so when they're paired with something chocolatey. But I will make more of an effort as the last of the Christmas treats are gone to choose healthier options for a lite bite between meals.

Water (not enough of it!)

In summer, I'm good at drinking water, but in winter I tend to crave hot drinks instead, or just go without. I only had 3 or 4 glasses of water today and I aim for double that. The one thing I love about winter is when the tap water is super cold! 

So that's the lot. I've posted the nutritional details throughout, as part of my resolution to track my food consumption! Totals below:

Goals for next week - healthier snacks and maybe less bread. What healthier options have you been choosing this month?

Great British Bake Off week 1 - Cake

So it's the first week off the Great British Bake Off and I've crazily decided to bake everything that the contestants are faced with. I'm not baking along in time, because frankly I don't have the time, but I'm determined to tackle everything and I shall write about one of my bakes for each week of challenges.

First up is cake. As a totally novice baker, I'm glad they started with a simple madeira cake, as I managed this OK. It's got a nice crack (!) and it tasted pretty yummy too.

The technical challenge is walnut cake with a fancy boiled icing. The contestants all made edible versions of this, so I'm hoping it's not a disaster waiting to happen. Getting my ingredients ready I crack on with the sponge mix, adding the chopped walnuts to my dry ingredients. I'm lazy and don't sift the flour, which will probably haunt me when my cake is too dense. I'm still very much getting used to the necessity of precision in timing, quantity and technique to create a decent baked good. As a love of slapdash inventive cooking, I rarely care for specifics of recipes and tend to make it up as I go along. For a good fish pie, pasta dish or homemade curry this tends to work fine, and is something I've been doing for many years. The science of baking, however, is much newer to me, and the more I question where my bakes are going wrong, the more I appreciate the reasons for such controlled steps. Baking is science, guys, and science is cool. 

I will get a fancy kitchen mixer soon. I think it's time to admit that I'm becoming quite keen on baking, and whilst it's a good workout to always cream my butter / sugar mixes by hand, I'm coming to the point where I'm craving efficiency over traditional methods.

Despite the lack of superpowered mixing assistance, I'm still able to create a fairly light and fluffy mixture, to which I add 4 eggs for moisture and to bind the mixture together.

I tip in my dry ingredients and fold in with a metal spoon as per the instructions. I have a tendency to overmix my ingredients and remove all the air, so I try to restrain myself and leave one or two tiny pockets of flour in the hope that my cakes will rise beautifully and not resemble pancakes for once.

I split the mixture between 3 pans and bake for a little less time than instructed. I've learnt that the oven in my new house cooks faster than expected, so I'm finding myself reducing either the temperature or the cooking time for most things. I'm still discovering which is more effective, but the cakes this time look pretty good - they are golden and springy to touch and there's a lovely nutty aroma filling the kitchen.

The next step in the recipe is to make the caramelised walnuts, which quite a few of the contestants struggled with. It seems that there is very little water to dissolve the sugar, and in their keenness to avoid stirring the hot sugar syrup and crystalising the mixture, a few were left with hot sugar rather than any kind of caramel. With this in mind, I add the water to the sugar and stir it together to make a kind of sugar paste which I put on a low heat. As a fan of multitasking, I throw some butter and sugar in a bowl to move onto the next step, the buttercream filling. 

Luckily, buttercream is something that's pretty tricky to get wrong, in my humble opinion. Mixed once again with a wooden spoon, it's ready in no time to sandwich the sponge layers together with creamy vanilla deliciousness.

Keeping an eye on my sugar, I wait until it is bubbling and browned before carefully adding the 10 walnuts and swirling around to coat in the hot mixture, before tipping onto greaseproof paper to cool. The recipe calls for a silicone sheet which I don't have. Later, as I am carefully peeling / washing off the slightly torn baking parchment from my beautiful caramel walnuts, I realise why silicone would have been a better idea. A lesson for next time and another baking related item added to my shopping list. 

Last up is the boiled icing, which we discovered on the show tends to go grainy if the sugar is not first dissolved in water before mixing with the egg whites. I'm heating that sugar for what seems like forever over a pan of water before I give up and start whisking. I've got quite a creamy, white and glossy mixture that's only a tiny bit grainy so I soldier on and hope for the best. Now, the recipe states that the mixture should be whisked over a pan of hot water, and that one needs to work quickly to decorate the cake before the icing sets. Hindsight being a wonderful thing, I would do basically the opposite were I ever to attempt a boiled icing again. By whisking the mixture over hot water, this means it's still very warm when I come to add it to my cake, and the whole thing starts sliding off and dripping onto the counter. The small amount of icing I leave in the bowl seems to be less runny after a few minutes before it has cooled fully, and probably would have coated the cake better. I can tell that it's still going to be grainy, and I don't get to add any swirls as the recipe instructs because it's still so warm! Maybe it needed more mixing, maybe if I had more patience and had actually waited for the sugar to dissolve properly I would have had more success, who knows. All I know is that boiled icing is added to my list of baking dislikes, and isn't going to become my signature any time soon.

I add the caramelised walnuts and even a little sugarwork I sort of twisted into something resembling a decoration. Forgetting to leave the cake to cool means that the caramel started to melt a little, discolouring the icing overnight. This is why this cake is a technical challenge. There are technical elements, that I haven't quite mastered yet.

There are definite "lairs" in my cake, the walnuts are pretty well distributed, I've managed to decorate with the walnuts and the taste is fine. The sponge is a little dry and there's that infamous graininess to the icing, but overall I hope I wouldn't have come last for my first technical. I did have the full recipe and the experiences of the bakers to go by though, so perhaps a significant advantage.

Next up, I baked a black forest gateaux. With less silly technical elements, this one went pretty well. Here's a picture below.

Week 2 is biscuits, and it's only going to get tougher from here on in!

Walnut cake recipe here.